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regasification terminal in Cartagena shuts down for scheduled maintenance.

The five-day window may sound manageable in isolation, but El Tiempo’s energy sector analysis places it inside a set of compounding vulnerabilities that make it anything but routine.

The Port of Tumaco on Colombia’s Pacific coast received a shipment of 103,000 barrels of fuel from the Cartagena refinery on June 20, in what Minister of Mines and Energy Edwin Palma framed as the reactivation of a strategic logistics node that will diversify fuel supply routes for Nariño and the country’s southwestern departments.

Dutch marine technology firm ECOnnect Energy has signed an agreement with Sociedad Portuaria Puerto Bahía S.A. — a majority-owned subsidiary of Canada’s Frontera Energy Corp. — to deliver its proprietary IQuay F-Class jettyless transfer system for a fast-tracked LNG import terminal in Cartagena Bay.

Colombia set a new record in the first week of June 2026, with imported gas reaching 32% of total national gas consumption — the highest share ever recorded in the country’s energy balance.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy formally issued a resolution on June 13 activating a preventive supply protection plan for the scheduled maintenance of the SPEC LNG regasification terminal in Cartagena, set to run from July 30 to August 3, 2026.

The Petro administration has announced the reactivation of the former Impala terminal in Barrancabermeja under a new name — Puerto Voluntad — with operations set to begin July 1.

Colombia’s liquefied petroleum gas (LPG aka propane) sector is heading into a structural supply gap, and a new Cartagena terminal is positioning itself as the primary solution

A year ago, Ecopetrol and Transportadora de Gas Internacional (TGI), the pipeline subsidiary of Grupo Energía Bogotá, were competing fiercely to build Colombia’s next LNG import terminal on the Caribbean coast, each claiming its project was the faster and more technically viable path to first gas in early 2027. Both promises have since deflated.

Since December 2024, we know that Colombia’s imported gas has been used for purposes other than feeding gas-powered thermogeneration plants, the reason regas facility SPEC was built in the first place. But is it significant?

Colombia’s environmental licensing authority ANLA used a June 1 press release to frame its recent activity on liquefied natural gas infrastructure in explicitly strategic terms: the accumulation of approved and pending regasification projects along the Caribbean coast is the country’s most concrete near-term tool for expanding gas supply, increasing competition, and improving prices for end users.